Just came across this ...
Women Drop Bodyfat Get Stronger W/Creatine
Creatine supplementation increases strength
improvements for the upper body in female athletes doing resistance training. It also decreases body fat more than placebo when skinfold measurements are utilized.
Hopefully I have all the women readers and the male
readers who have active female friends interested at this point. Again, I won't cover too many things we already know about creatine but instead will focus on interesting "add-ons" from this study.
The Effect of Creatine Supplementation During Resistance Training in women (M.Brenner et.al. Journal of Strength and Conditioning Research, 2000, 14(2), 207-213)
We're already aware that creatine supplementation has been shown to exhibit an ergogenic effect on maximal effort, repeated sprint exercise, as well as weight training. Harris et al. reported that the increase in muscle creatine as a result of oral supplementation was greater in the leg that was trained as compared to the control rested leg.
This seems to infer that creatine uptake may be greater in muscle being trained versus some whole-body muscle uptake when supplementing with creatine.
Until this study only one other study had been published where women were the test subjects and resistance training was the exercise protocol utilized. That study tested previously untrained women for 10 weeks. One other interesting note regarding previous creatine studies is most of them utilized short-term supplementation in men, even though many women use creatine and MOST INDIVIDUALS TAKE IT FOR PROLONGED PERIODS.
Every time I read a 5 day creatine study I want to vomit. Why do the study when it doesn't mimic real-life events?
The present study tested the benefits of oral creatine
supplementation on twenty NCAA Division 1 lacrosse players between the ages of 18-22. This was a double-blind, placebo controlled study. None of the subjects had used creatine for at least 2 months prior to. They took 5 grams 4 times per day for 7 days and then took 2 grams per day (all in capsule form) for the remaining 24 days and the placebo group took sucrose capsules.
The women participated in a supervised resistance-training program 3 times per week.
Body composition was measured on day 1 and day 38 of the study with hydrodensitometry (water tank) and skinfold measurement. Strength was measured via a free-weight bench press (1RM) and leg extension (Nautilus) on days 3 and 39.
An interesting dietary note is that on a self-reported
questionnaire 56% of the women considered themselves vegetarian and 24% of the nonvegetarians consumed red meat, poultry, and /or fish less than twice a month.
Other creatine studies have indicated those with the lowest pre-test creatine muscle creatine concentrations have the most to gain with creatine supplementation. Vegetarians are known to have lower muscle creatine stores than those who consume meat with regularity.
Findings:
- Bench press increased more in the creatine-supplemented group than the placebo group.
- Leg extension improved in both groups but was not significantly different between the groups. It's interesting to note that other studies have
also found that creatine has a more profound effect on upper body strength over lower body strength. Why? No one knows at this time.
The authors note that it's possible these highly trained women were already near their maximum genetic
potential for leg strength (remember, they are lacrosse
players) and thus there was less room for advancement
regardless of supplementation.
- When skinfold measurements were used 85.7% of the creatine users dropped body fat but only 33% of the placebo group saw a decrease. The mean drop in body fat for creatine users was 1.2% but the placebo group saw a mean increase in body fat of .3%. No statistical difference in body fat was noted
when hydrodensitometry was utilized.
The authors note that "...if creatine increased body hydration, this would result in an underestimation of body density and an overestimation of body fat after supplementation using hydrodensitometry."
I found this study of interest because women are typically paranoid about increasing body weight with creatine use.
In the present 5 week study both groups increased body weight but there was no statistical difference between the creatine and placebo groups. This is good for women afraid of gaining more weight with creatine use.
Further, I like the fact the women who took creatine saw a drop in body fat and the placebo group did not. And finally, creatine increased performance in the gym and the creatine group increased their bench more than the placebo group.
The authors noted "...no indication of liver or kidney malfunction" as well and this corroborates other
research indicating that the only side effect of creatine
supplementation is an increase in lean mass.